Community Park Update

The park project is advancing by leaps and bounds this year!  Each team that has contributed a mural in the last few months has added to the beauty and joy in this place.  And, perhaps most visibly, the city government has installed the landscaping as promised, and the rainy season is helping the grass grow nice and strong.  In a couple weeks the park will officially open its doors to the community (we've been waiting for the grass to take root before letting it get used).

The Carrillos park project was started in 2010 as a joint effort between the city government (who provided the land and landscaping) and Strong Missions (who provided the materials and labor through volunteers like you).  The neighbors, and especially the children, are thrilled that there is now a safe place to play so they don't need to play out in the streets, and can't wait for it to open its doors.

Please enjoy the photos below.

The slide and teeter totter were donated and installed by the municipal government.

A couple of the murals which were not seen in the pictures above.

Many thanks to all of you who have been part of this project!

Update part 2 of 3

On to projects…We’re finishing up the community park/playground as we speak, and we’ve begun building the new office and apartments for the interns and program assistants. Office construction began the first of April and will be done by the middle of May.

Beginning the end of May we’ll finish up the park and begin a house for a member of the local Methodist Church. Don Oscar is the patriarch of 7 family members crammed into a house that could fall during the next strong earthquake. We therefore plan to have that project finished by August at the latest.

Summer months will also hold the return to the feeding program/parsonage building construction at the local Methodist Church, and this project will become our priority project (like the park up until now) until it is done, probably lasting 2 more years after this summer. When it is finished we’ll be able to feed 100 children there. In addition, this summer we’re adding a second floor to the local Assembly of God Church, also so that we can feed as many as 100 hundred children there in the near future. Both of these churches now have temporary feeding programs, but there are approximately 200 children in the Carrillos areas who need better nutrition, all the time.

In the fall the plan is to build a house in the southern part of Costa Rica for Alvaro’s mother. He bought a piece of land for her, but simply cannot afford to build her a house. She desperately needs one as once or twice a year the area river floods and she has water up to her waist. Alvaro’s other brother sleeps in the ceiling to keep an eye on their things when there’s water in the house. It’s time to eliminate this stress from all their lives and get her into a small house on the new, safe piece of land. This should take us 6 weeks, and it will be completed between the Fall teams, who will work mostly in the Methodist Church in Carrillos.

Update part 1 of 3

Hello all,

Charlie here. So much is happening, it’s time to catch you all up again regarding what’s happening with Strong Missions and our different ministries. I suspect this will be posted in several installments.

First of all, the addition of our two program assistants, Rebecca last summer and Scott the beginning of this year, is working out fantastic. They’ve learned so fast and work so hard that it is allowing me to spread out and begin to work in other areas. One of those areas is marketing, as we’re still a little down in numbers for 2011, and therefore we still need numerous for this year to finish the projects we have lined up. Remember, we’re still offering $100 off per person, for a team of 10 or more, for Fall months (September through the first week of December this year).

With the increased marketing, we’re planning to visit various churches with which we have ongoing relationships, as well as visit new interested churches and distribute information at youth and mission conferences, etc. If you would like a visit from us, please let us know, and we’ll try our best to get to your neck of the woods asap.

We’re now also beginning to take contact info for medical staff, as we have a ton of people interested in our putting a few such teams together for them. We have the areas to work, much of which with undocumented immigrants, as they tend to fall through the cracks. We’re excited about the number of people wanting to help as well as the possibility to help in such a way, and we suspect there will be various opportunities for medical staff to do so within the next year or so.

We’re also moving headquarters, as the owner of the former property increased the rent by 15%, and let us know there would be 15% added on each year. That’s just not feasible if we want to keep costs down for teams, so God blessed us, the same day as a matter of fact, with a large two story house connected to the Hotel Los Horcones, just 200 yards from the old place. We’re also renting the hotel beginning May 1, which means with additional hotel traffic we should be able to keep team lodging costs down for years to come, perhaps until we buy land and build our own place.